


how it feels to lose someone

by reiiixc



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Hospitals, Original Character(s), Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22084318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reiiixc/pseuds/reiiixc
Summary: Based on true events.TW: illness, death
Kudos: 3





	how it feels to lose someone

The hospice hid no secrets behind its brightly colored walls. Each room I caught a glimpse of had a singular twin sized bed, with machinery built into the wall behind it. There was a bench next to a window. Outside, vines spiraled up the terrace pillars and small flowers lined the dirt pathway that ran around the building. The sky was painted blue, with wispy clouds dotting the sky. Although the sun was out, making the green grass shine with the dew that rested upon it, everything seemed tinted gray. We passed children in wheelchairs that looked as young as six years old. Seeing them made my heart sink. As we approached her room, I could feel my heart racing. My stomach was tied in knots. My thoughts would not cease. We opened the door and stepped in, murmuring hi’s and hello’s. Just the sight of her made me want to scream and plead until my voice was gone that they take this suffering away from her.  
She was still asleep, even though it was past noon. The doctors told me she would be drowsy from her medication. Her hair was braided messily, and I knew her mother had done it. She was covered by a floral-patterned blanket, but I could see a pastel pink short sleeve shirt resting on her shoulders. Her frame was small to begin with, but now the bones in her arms were close to showing. My throat ached with the sobs I dared not let escape from my mouth. I blinked my eyes furiously, not wanting my hot tears to run down my cheeks. I had to stay strong.  
For her.  
My friends were gathered around her bed. My eyes traced the tubes running to and from her body. A strong, familiar sense of helplessness washed over me, each wave stabbing me in the heart, making it crumble and fall to my feet.  
The doctor gently shook her awake and whispered, “They’re here.” Her eyes fluttered open and she glanced at each one of us, taking in our expressions as we took in hers.  
I stood there, not knowing what to do or what to say. Each time I opened my mouth to speak, words failed me. My fingers were tangled together in a fiddling mess, and I couldn’t seem to stop my eyes from moving from object to object, avoiding her eyes.  
What do you say to someone who knows they’re going to die?  
“How are you feeling?”  
Obviously terrible.  
“Everything will be okay.”  
A lie.  
“Things will get better.”  
They won’t.  
“Is there anything I can do to help?”  
There isn’t.  
If I felt hopeless, I couldn’t begin to imagine what she felt like.  
She laid her eyes on me, and smiled a weary smile. She held her hand out for me to take, and I gently held it and carefully sat on the bed, as if putting my weight on the metal frame would snap it in half. The mattress was soft, bouncy, comfortable. I was still holding her hand, my hand shaking. I could feel the corners of my mouth turn downwards, signaling to me that I needed to try harder to keep myself from crying.  
But I couldn’t help it. Tears spilled over onto my cheeks, but my hands would not move to wipe them away. She was still smiling at me. She was always smiling. She tried to sit up, but she was weak from all the pain medication that was in her body. I helped her, then stared into her eyes, wanting this moment to last forever. I wanted to cherish this feeling. I knew I would never get it back.  
“How’s school going?” she asked, voice dripping with drowsiness.  
My mom had told me that she felt left out because she couldn’t be at school with her friends. Thankful that she started the conversation, I replied, “It’s alright. Everyone misses you. Your teachers are asking me how you’re doing.”  
She nodded, then said, “I wish I could be there with you guys.”  
“Me too… me too,” I said as my voice caught in my throat.  
My friends joined in the conversation, and we updated her on how we were doing and what was going on in our lives. I knew she didn’t want to talk about herself, and I didn’t want to make her feel like she had to. But eventually we had to leave.  
She looked so dejected, and here eyes were glassy. “Please don’t leave,” she said.  
I couldn’t say anything, I just looked at her sadly and slowly walked towards the door.  
“Take me with you, please, I’m fine, I swear!” she cried, tears rapidly rolling down her face.  
“I can’t. I’m so sorry,” I said, also crying.  
Sobs shook her body. She looked at me with wet, pleading, tired eyes.  
“We’ll come back. You know we will. We always will,” I tried to comfort her.  
“We have to go,” my mom said sternly. We turned towards the door.  
“No!” she screamed.  
Don’t look back.  
I turned the knob and stepped outside.  
“Don’t leave me here!”  
Don’t look back.  
Doctors entered the room as we went out. The door shut behind us. We could still hear her screams from inside. It broke my heart. We walked towards the car, passing her window.  
Don’t look back.  
We piled into the car, and I hugged myself and slouched in my seat. I wasn’t crying, but I felt awful. I felt numb. I reassured myself that there would be next time, that we would see her again, that she would live longer than expected.  
We never saw her again.

The memorial service was held at the hospice, in a small room down the hall from hers. A couple teachers from school were there, but it was filled mostly with her aunts and uncles and cousins.  
I was wearing all black, even though I knew she wouldn’t have wanted that. My eyes were bloodshot from crying, which I knew she also wouldn’t have wanted, but I couldn’t help it. My friends were next to me, taking in everything along with me. My body felt heavy, and I stared out the window at the gray rain clouds that covered the sky. The white paint was chipping off the terrace pillars, and the vines that spiraled up them were now hanging by a thread. It was almost as if she took all the bright and warm and comfort and beauty from the world with her and left none to spare.  
Photographs of her as a child lined the walls, and on the windowsill sat the honorable award she won at school for being someone people could rely on for just about anything. My eyes landed on a picture of her, me, and our friends outside a restaurant, a fierce wind blowing our hair in every single direction. That day was her thirteenth birthday, and although unaware of it at the time, the last one she'd ever have.  
I missed her. I missed all the ways she would make me laugh by reciting cheesy jokes, and the way she knew random world trivia, and the times we would stay up until early morning hours at each other’s house on a sleepover, replaying silly slow motion videos we had taken a few minutes prior, quietly laughing our heads off. I missed the way she would talk too much and too loudly and how she would attempt to teach me Cantonese while I tried to teach her Mandarin. I missed the times we would bake cookies and make chocolate milk and call on Google Hangouts before sleeping. I missed her.  
As the service ended, I snuck a glance through the glass in the door to the inside of her room, and saw a new patient. It broke my heart to know that the cycle would repeat itself over and over as long as the world kept spinning. Someone would get sick--irreversibly sick--and end up in a hospice, have their friends and family visit them, and then pass away, only making space for someone new.  
I knew other people could look like her and act like her, but nobody could ever replace her or all the memories I had with her.  
But even then, I was already forgetting her. I couldn’t remember whether she had gotten her braces off or not. I couldn’t remember whether the corners of her upper lip turned upwards when she smiled or if they only stretched into a line like mine did. I couldn’t remember whether her brown eyes got brighter in the sunlight or if they stayed dark.  
My chest was hollow, my mind blank. I stepped outside and walked towards the car with my friends. This time, instead of hearing screaming, all I heard was the silence left by her absence.  
I should have looked back.  
But now it was too late.


End file.
